Driving Successful Transformation: A Blueprint for Continuous Innovation
Kodak. Sony. BlackBerry. Blockbuster Video. Not so long ago, these companies were all considered best in class—leaders in their industries, brands beloved by millions of consumers. Today, they serve as business school case studies, cautionary tales of complacency, stagnation, and, ultimately, obsolescence.
How could this happen? Every one of these companies pioneered innovative products and services, and consumers LOVED them.
Generations of families captured their most cherished memories with Kodak cameras. Sony was a dominant force in consumer electronics—who could forget the Walkman?—and owned vast music and film catalogs. BlackBerry became the go-to smartphone for legions of Wall Street workers and enterprise users worldwide. Blockbuster reimagined home entertainment for millions in the pre-digital era.
And while these companies were born of innovation, they were somehow caught flat-footed by change. New, agile upstarts swooped in, transformed their markets, and stole their customers away, seemingly overnight.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and looking back, we can clearly see the warning signs for the industry leaders. Customer tastes were changing, technology was advancing, but they could not—or would not—evolve to meet the challenge. And the rest is history.
As broadband leaders, we can learn from their experiences to ensure we are always on the right side of transformation. Know your subscribers, continually surprise them with products and services they love, deliver consistently excellent service, and above all, innovate.
Creating an Unforgettable Subscriber Experience
Service providers who continue to do things the way they’ve always done will get left behind. Subscriber expectations evolve at the speed of the next company offering new experiences. They want to choose an internet service personalized to how they work, browse, search, and stream.
You can offer new, innovative choices that keep subscribers safe, secure, productive, and happy. But you can’t do it on an outdated model of speed and price. You need a constant, virtuous cycle of innovation that focuses on the ever-changing needs of your subscribers.
Building the Foundation for Innovation
We’re all managing waves of disruption, from digital transformation to artificial intelligence, data privacy, and even workforce changes. But by creating a strategic plan to evaluate, measure, and innovate on the subscriber experience, you can better serve your audience and even impact the buying decisions of future subscribers.
Start by mapping the customer journey, reviewing the end-to-end subscriber experience by each phase—awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and loyalty. This allows you to align your internal teams and refine your processes around the singular goal of customer obsession.
The next step in enhancing the subscriber experience is to listen to your subscribers. Make every interaction an opportunity to do better. Get feedback whenever you can, using customer satisfaction surveys, customer effort scores, and social media. Net Promoter Scores℠ and subscriber sentiment can give you an even deeper understanding of how subscribers feel about your brand. And face-to-face interaction, like focus groups and advisory boards, shows subscribers you’re actively listening to their concerns.
Aligning Your Business Goals With Data
If you want to innovate your subscriber experience, let the facts and metrics you collect be your guide. Build strategic business decisions that align with your goals, objectives, and initiatives so you can better understand your subscribers and your competitors.
As you innovate, you’ll need to continue measuring subscriber sentiment. In other words, don’t assume—validate. As you set meaningful KPIs around customer experience, trust the data to know what’s working and what’s not. Dig deeper to understand what’s influencing changes in metrics. Adapt your course as necessary to continue delivering an exceptional subscriber experience.
Disruption and competition will always be knocking at the door. The service providers who are not complacent, who continue to improve their subscriber experience, are the ones who will rise to the business challenges that come their way. When you understand the past and the present, you can then predict the future.
Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company Inc., Satmetrix Systems Inc. and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company Inc., Satmetrix Systems Inc. and Fred Reichheld.
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